Local Tea Party leader has consulting contract with JEA

But executives praise the work done by Billie Tucker.

In between anti-tax rallies and chastising Jacksonville for “waste in our city government,” the director of the First Coast Tea Party has made more than $90,000 coaching the city-owned utility’s chief executive and board.

CEO Service Bureau, owned by local Tea Party Executive Director Billie Tucker, has billed JEA since 2008 under a contract for “consulting services for board/executive management effectiveness,” records show.

Services include $300 one-on-one coaching sessions with CEO Jim Dickenson, developing a formal board governing policy, and facilitating retreats as well as other long-range planning meetings.

The contract wasn’t large enough that it had to be formally bid and, but JEA policy requires it to ask for at least three proposals. Two others didn’t have interest, making Tucker’s firm the only one to make an offer.

One former president of the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County calls Tucker’s contract “hypocritical,” and another says it attacks Tucker’s credibility.

But Tucker said she does not see a conflict between her political activism and her work with JEA.

“They have to have people do work for them,” Tucker said. “Some are employees and some are contractors. I’m a contractor for them.”

Tucker had the JEA contract for about a year before she became heavily involved in the tea party, a political activist group fighting government spending that has been particularly critical of sitting officeholders and President Barack Obama.

Dickenson said Tucker’s work for the utility has defined the board’s role and, by analyzing personalities and how various JEA executives and board members work together, improved the way he communicates with top staff and the board.

Tucker also works through Dickenson’s annual evaluation with him and the board, and Dickenson said he leans on her after monthly board meetings for tips about getting the message across.

“All that for less than $100,000?” Dickenson asked, “In my opinion, that’s a steal.”

The amount spent has dropped each year, from $43,000 in 2008 to $30,000 in 2009 down to about $17,000 with a month left in this budget year.

Including increases that will hit bills next month, the average residential utility bill has gone up 25 percent in the time since the contract was awarded.

Tucker’s company was recommended to Dickenson by Jay Fant, the JEA board chairman at the time who still serves on the board. Tucker did consulting work for First Guaranty Bank, the bank Fant runs, and he said he was impressed.

Fant was listed as one of the clients to call on her proposal to JEA, and it was at Tucker’s request that Fant first spoke at a tea party rally last year.

Fant say Tucker has helped the board define precisely who the utility serves — the ratepayers of Duval County — and drills that message home when decisions are being made.

“She forces us to answer questions that are hard to answer and keeps us focused on that goal,” Fant said.

Tucker worked more than 15 years for the company that is now Vistage Florida, an international organization of CEOs, according to her proposal to JEA. She opened her own firm in 2001.

Tucker declined to say how much of her overall revenue comes from JEA but says she has many other clients — though business has dropped like it has for most companies during the recession.

Philosophically, the Tea Party and Concerned Taxpayers are in line on most issues — lowering taxes, keeping smaller government and bird-dogging waste.

Most of the Tea Party’s focus centered on national issues, but the group held a news conference this month urging the City Council to stop the 9 percent property tax rate Mayor John Peyton has proposed.

But at least two former leaders of the Concerned Taxpayers have problems with Tucker’s JEA deal.

“For a person who says they’re in favor of smaller government to take a no-bid contract from an organization that is basically a government agency strikes me as hypocritical,” said John Winkler, board member and former president of Concerned Taxpayers.

Councilman Richard Clark, who has been one of the most vocal against Peyton’s proposed tax rate, said he didn’t know Tucker had a JEA contract and doesn’t see it as a problem.

“Billie Tucker’s got a right to make a living like anyone else out there,” Clark said. “And if she happens to have a contract with JEA, good for her.”

JEA board members rave about her work and, when Dickenson brought up eliminating the contract when the utility stopped capital work and cut $30 million from its budget in 2008, board members said they only wanted to scale it back some.

Townsend, who has served on corporate boards including Winn-Dixie and Bank of America, said Dickenson deserves credit for understanding that outside expertise was needed to really improve the way the board and management operate.

Tucker said the Tea Party is working to make sure taxpayers are protected and doesn’t think that working for a utility has any effect on her running the political group.

“We have people who work in city government that believe government is too big,” Tucker said. “Does that mean they shouldn’t work for the government?”

I have to side with Pet Rock on this one. In my view, there are two primary issues in this story:

1) Should JEA need to go outside for help with the noted tasks ?

2) Was it, considering her involvement with the Tea Party, and its complaints against government spending and waste, hypocritical for Ms. Tucker to work for JEA in the role she has ? To be fair, if she believed JEA needed help with those issues, and she believed she was capable of providing such assistance, then probably not. However, if the answer was no to either of those questions, then in my opinion she violated the Tea Party principles.

In the end, many would argue that, with few exceptions, we all think highly of our principles, until money comes into the picture.

No not in the sense you think, like the fad "pet rock" from the 60s and 70s. Pet Rock is a derivative of my name. And please copy and paste anything I wrote that insinuates I am offended at being called a Pet Rock. I'm not, it's my nickname that I use publicly. I do now see that Teabagger has the same tone and effect that that Liberal or Lib does, how funny.

You addressed the issues in the article by stating earlier,"So Billie Tucker should feel ashamed for having a job, being a productive member of society and caring enough about what's happening to our country to get involved? Of course with the entitlement mentality of the progressive left someone with a job becomes fair game. Guess they're running out of bigger game to demonize. Keep up the good work Billie and Never Surrender!"

That's your point? You do realize that people who build bridges to nowhere also have a job; to build useless bridges. They're paid handsomely off of the backs of taxpayers. Now can you understand? Every contractor that bilks local, state and federal governments with useless projects and services HAVE JOBS. That's a pitiful defense of Ms. Tucker's JEA "work". She certainly has every right to seek work, even from the gov't. It's my opinion that the JEA CEO should not have to pay to "know who JEA serves". You know I'm right.